Brother - DS-940DW Compact Wireless Duplex Mobile Document Scanner - White

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The vast majority of our reviews come from verified purchases. Reviews from customers may include My Best Buy members, employees, and Tech Insider Network members (as tagged). Select reviewers may receive discounted products or points for an honest, helpful review.

• Rated 4 out of 5 stars

  Its a great scanner but continuous scan lacks.

  • Tech Insider Network Member
  • Top 1000 Contributor

  Hello. I first want to say the Brother DS-940DW is a great portable scanner. Lately, I feel as though this part of the market has been left alone and new improvements have not come to light. I am glad Brother has made this device and its sister models. The initial setup and download was a breeze. With this device having multiple connection methods I was impressed with how well it could detect the device and make sure everything would would connect correctly in the future. You have three options to "connect" this device either it be Wifi, USB, or use a micro SD card (I will talk about this later on). After the initial setup, I was easily able to turn on my scanner at any time and it would connect to my pc via wifi in less than a minute. If I decided to scan via USB, all I had to do was flip a switch on the side and plug in the usb and my pc instantly recognized the device without having to reinstall software and it still knew it was the same device. Impressive. The scanner has a ton of capabilities to fit every situation. With a flip of a switch you can use the wifi to scan to your pc or mobile device. Flip to usb mode and you can plug your device right into your pc or you can flip the switch to SD card mode if you have a micro SD card inserted and scan right to the card without any wifi, pc or mobile access.. A great way to just scan and have no other worries. I should note this scanner does have an embedded battery so you can scan via wifi or micro sd card without any cords. I could not find any info about how long the battery will last via hours or with how many scans. I should say out of the box I plugged it right in my pc to charge with the included usb cable and it did not take long for it to charge. It is fully charged when the green battery light goes off. This device will not tell you the battery percentage but will show you a battery with light that will change from green to orange. Once the light goes orange I recommend charging it because there will be no warning when its almost dead and will shut off on you. If this happens all you have to do is plug it in to your pc. As long as you dont make any changes to the scanning software in the mean time it will automatically know where to pick off as you turn the scanner back on and continue to scan. Software is the same program "Brother iPrint&Scan" for all their current printers. I can easily switch back and fourth from my big Brother printer or my DS-940DW portable scanner. The software is simple and capable but is not refined. I wish the software was just a little more eye appealing. This scanner comes loaded with extras though.. you get Power PDF for free as well as Brothers new Web based BR-Receipt software. Power PDF is awesome with a million edit and save functions. At this time I could not get the BR-Receipt to download as the printer was just released and I did not have access to the software yet. I am sure it will be simple and sufficient. Now to talk about scanning: When you insert your paper, card, etc on the bottom slot it will auto grab it and hold it in place. An awesome feature that acts like your third hand. Once you hit start it will scan super fast. I should note that you can continuous scan but its not what you think. You will have to hit add page on the program click start scanning again and then it will scan and add a page.. you will have to do this for every single page... Yea so that 50 page document will be better off being scanned in a normal printer scanner or more capable larger brother scanner. I would say this scanner is good for 10 pages and under (duplex) as soon as you do more than that. The add page, scan and repeat gets to you. Why you cant just tell it to keep scanning as you add another page to one file is besides me and is really a flaw. This could be updated in the future but I am not sure if Brother will.

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  Posted 5 years ago by Tstall

• Rated 5 out of 5 stars

  Truly Wireless Scanner

  • Tech Insider Network Member
  • Top 50 Contributor

  --- SETUP --- The setup of the scanner is quick and simple. It comes with a USB 3.0 cable but no USB adapter. You can use your phone adapter or any computer with a USB port. You may use the scanner while it is charging, but it’s purpose is to be a portable charger, allowing you to scan away from a plug with it’s Li-ion battery. --- FEATURES --- The key feature of this scanner is that it works completely wirelessly after charging the battery. No Wi-Fi required for it to work, as it has its own direct WiFi to your mobile device. Can scan double-sided documents, in color, with no bleedthrough. Can store scanned files directly to a Micro SD card. --- PERFORMANCE --- The performance of this scanner is phenomenal. As an educator, I often find myself wanting to scan student work to showcase later, after making some notes. The scanner is fast and the double-sided feature eliminates a second scan-through. The scanner has a feature that grabs the document and pulls it in a little so that you know the paper has been recognized. This same feature is a great way to see if your document is aligned properly or not before you scan. Scanning one page takes about 5 seconds even when double-sided is an option. I mainly used this scanner with the Brother app (iPrint&Scan) on iPhone. The app offers a few, limited features, such as cropping or straightening an angled document, but those features leave a lot to be desired. Luckily, if you set up the documents correctly and choose the right size of paper prior to scan (letter, A4), you shouldn’t use those features because the scanner does an excellent job. --- EXPECTATIONS --- The product meets my expectations. I’ve used many scanners at my job, and most often they have left me disappointed. This one has ticked all the right boxes for me and more. I got this at the right time, right before doing my taxes, and I trusted it enough to scan sensitive documents and saved them to my cloud storage of choice. --- VALUE --- The price for the scanner in terms of value is a worthy investment if you plan on scanning often and on the go. --- APPROVAL --- I highly recommend this product for people who scan on the go and are dissatisfied by using the mobile app scanners from phones.

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  Posted 5 years ago by Trobadour

• Rated 2 out of 5 stars

  Oh My Goodness, What it Took to Install

  • Top 500 Contributor
  • Tech Insider Network Member

  So, I am a 61 year old woman who may have the very highest technical know-how, but as a practicing CPA who uses all kinds of software and various machines, I am not a blithering idiot either. I have now made 2 calls to Brother's 1-800 telephone number, both that landed offshore, and have spent at least an hour and a half on the first call with Victor and over an hour on the second call with Anisha. Now, maybe this machine is still so new that they have not adequately trained their tech support on the model. So, what has been my chief complaint and problem. Well, this machine would not connect wirelessly with either my home desktop using Windows 7 Professional and then also with my HP Spectre that has Windows 10 Edge software. In both cases, without remediation by Anisha either asking higher technical support people for instructions or her reading up on this specific machine, I would still not have been able to set it up wirelessly, which was what my intention was when I first requested this machine. I currently have almost all of my printers and scanners wirelessly connected and why would I want to go backwards at this point. So, I was finally successful with Anisha to get this machine wirelessly connected with my HP Spectre and will try to go back when I have time to try and install it wirelessly to my home desktop. The key factor is that the computers do not recognize this machine's network. In discussing this with Anisha, this machine essentially has its own built-in network and rather then using your existing network that connects to your computer, printers, other scanners, etc., you have to go into your WIFI and then set it up within this machine's own network and use the PASS number that is printed, among other numbers, on the bottom of the machine. When I went through this special network set up, the blue-flashing Wi-fi symbol finally went solid and had the connection to my HP Spectre laptop. Hooray!!! Bottom line, it should not have taken so much to get this wirelessly working with my computer. Physically, it is compact enough to be able to be carried around by the user for portable use, and considering today's conditions with COVID-19, this would be perfect to use by people who are telecommuting or those who would normally go from place to place- this would be a really good, lightweight, compact machine to scan items into your computer for whatever reason you might need to do so. . Afterall, when we request items to try, we have a good sense if this is a product that we want to be able to use in either our everyday personal or professional life. And while we get the product for our honest, written opinion on how it performs..I want to like all the products that I pick to try and always hope that it is very user friendly.

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  Posted 5 years ago by KansasMeddlingMom